Quad GPU in 1 card ???

josejonesFeb 26, 2012, 3:22 PM

Quad GPU in 1 card ???

Dual GPU's in a single GPU card have been out for while now. Since PCIe 3 is out now I wonder if that will help to enable graphic card makers to come out with a quad GPU in a single card? Or, perhaps a quad-core GPU?

Anybody know anything? I'm just opening it up for discussion since I personally haven't heard or read any such thing.

In CPU terms think of it like having two CPUs on the same motherboard, this is very different from having a dual core CPU. GPUs by their very nature have tons of cores, the GTX 580 has 512 cores, the 7970 has 2048 cores(very different core setups result in similar performance).

The main deterrent for multi GPU cards is the ungodly amount of heat generated that the cooling system has to take care of. PCI-e spec says that a card should not use more than 300 W of power, the GTX 590 and 6990 broke that spec so if you look they don't have a PCI Express logo on them, but if you were to try to push the power consumption any farther with even a triple GPU card you would need a 3 slot cooling system and a hell of a power supply, but even then you are still going to have a very loud and very hot card that would only really be suited for a system with a full water cooling system.

I doubt you will ever see a quad GPU card, too much heat and wayyyy too much power in such a small package to be safe and reliable.

i think OP mixed up dual gpu (radeon hd 5970/6990/6870 xx or geforce gtx 590) with cores.edit: pcie 2.0 cards don't saturate cpie 2.0 bandwidth for gaming. only area a quad gpu would improve performance is gpu computing. however, designing one would be difficult and uneconomic... even with 4 entry level gpus.

It's dual gpu not dual core. A gpu is like a cpu, a square processing unit, which has cores on it. The dual gpus have 2 of them on it. Cores on gpus are different than cpus, you will notice in the spec sheets, there are hundreds if not thousands of "cores"; stream processors really as they are not cores.

I have thought that it might be clever to design a graphics card like a motherboard.

Have perhaps up to 4 sockets into which one might install smaller gpu modules. That would provide up to 4x expansion without having to buy a new base card.Why not ram also? start with a base amount of ram, and provide a couple of ram expansion slots. And, cooler options too.

I have made the necessary adjustment in the OP over the "core" thing to hopefully alleviate any misunderstandings. Does the OP now suffice? I was considering each GPU a "core" in the OP originally for some reason. Thanks for the clarification.

I have made the necessary adjustment in the OP over the "core" thing to hopefully alleviate any misunderstandings. Does the OP now suffice? I was considering each GPU a "core" in the OP originally for some reason. Thanks for the clarification.

They(Companies that make GPU/Video Cards) should make a GPU separate from the PCB... We should be able to upgrade the GPU to a better and faster GPU without buying the whole parts... They should start selling PCB and GPU separately and list which PCB support which GPU so we dont have to spend $600 on a new card awhile buying a new GPU(W/out PCB) for $200...

I think that 2 GPU on the same die should be the next move not 4 GPU on 1 card.

Can you elaborate on this a bit? How does this seem like it would give you better performance?

Its basically just making a GPU thats got twice as many cores and shaders like from the 4870 to the 5870. CPUs and GPUs are very different, a bigger GPU by its very nature is the same as adding more cores, having two GPUs on the same die would actually hurt performance since they wouldn't be able to share all data at the same time, a single double sized GPU would perform better.

Can you elaborate on this a bit? How does this seem like it would give you better performance?

Its basically just making a GPU thats got twice as many cores and shaders like from the 4870 to the 5870. CPUs and GPUs are very different, a bigger GPU by its very nature is the same as adding more cores, having two GPUs on the same die would actually hurt performance since they wouldn't be able to share all data at the same time, a single double sized GPU would perform better.

Instead of having to put 2 GPU in SLI on 1 PCB, having 2 GPU in SLI on the same die. This kind of setup will be found only in high-end graphic cards, not regular cards.Not doubling the shaders and cores count but having 2 different GPU on the same die, they'll be working in SLI the same way 2 GPU on 1 PCB.

It would be better to make a gpu bigger to have more cores rather than putting more gpus on the same card. Having multiple gpus on the same die is essentially what multi core is. I don't know if you've ever had sli/cf but it is a pain to deal with even with 2 gpus let alone 4; it's twice the trouble just to get it to even work on the very few games to support it. But as stated before the issue is heat and power, just look at the 6990 and 590.

Here's a size comparison of SBE. Left to right, SB, SBE, nehalem (1366). This would be the solution now until the manufacturing process can allow smaller components. No having to deal with the issues of sli/cf or having to deal with what supports it and what doesn't (or multisocket support for cpus).

Instead of having to put 2 GPU in SLI on 1 PCB, having 2 GPU in SLI on the same die. This kind of setup will be found only in high-end graphic cards, not regular cards.Not doubling the shaders and cores count but having 2 different GPU on the same die, they'll be working in SLI the same way 2 GPU on 1 PCB.

1 card > SLI. If you can make 2 gpus on the same die you can make 1 big gpu die for much better performance.

I don't know much about GPU's but, I have heard several people talk about the heat, energy and other issues with dual GPU's such as the 6990 and 590. I've heard even worse things about going with two or more GPU's in SLI &/or Crossfire.

I wonder if those issues have been worked out in the 7990 and 690? I guess nobody really knows since they aren't out yet.